Connecticut Power Company Generates PR Problem

Jim Nichols
, ContributorI create powerful stories for world leading brandsOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

It has been a rough few months for utility companies in the northeast. After Hurricane Irene and the recent October snowstorm, the phrase “Good morning” was often replaced with “Do you have power?” in many northeastern offices, schools and neighborhood cafés. I don’t envy these utilities companies: two unusual weather events combined with an aging infrastructure and a notoriously short-fused population can be a headache for even the best prepared. Apparently, the strain is showing at Northeast Utilities, the parent company of Connecticut Light & Power, which blasted a local television meteorologist on Facebook who has been in the dark for eight days.

Ryan Hanrahan is a meteorologist for NBC station WVIT in Hartford, Connecticut. For the record, I was also an on-camera meteorologist for NBC News and local NBC stations, but never knew Ryan personally, and saw the post on Facebook and started digging. On November 2nd, four days after the storm, Ryan wrote a personal blog that questioned the utility for blaming restoration challenges on the weather forecast, claiming “the storm was far more significant than expected.” He shared the post on Facebook and a representative of the utility decided to reply back. This is where things went from bad to worse:

There are two items here. First, either the strain is showing at Northeast Utilities (which owns CL&P), or it doesn’t have a clearly defined social media policy. Picking fights with a local television anchor is never a good idea, especially when there are a few thousand followers who live within your service area and most likely without power watching. An adjustment to an official forecast would not have impacted the number of trees that would have fallen on power lines. The utility tried to reply again with an apology, but in the social media world, that damage had been done. Second, if CL&P did want to address these issues, from a crisis communications perspective it would have been smarter to clearly apologize, empathize with those affected and begin a dialogue about how residents can more easily report overgrown trees in the future. Furthermore, this entire experience can start an overdue and serious discussion about the fragility of our nation’s power distribution network and how public investment is needed to build a stronger, smarter power grid to avoid future major disruptions. Unfortunately, the company is coming across as reactionary and unprepared – a perception that can last for years and dilute the real conversations we need to be having about our energy infrastructure.

CL&P does seem to be updating its website and offering a text update service, but since I don’t live in its service area it is hard to say what is happening on the ground. After a week without power, there is little that can be done to manage customer’s anger, short of getting the power flowing. I hope that CL&P can wrap up its cleanup and get Connecticut energized again soon. I can’t imagine what it must be like for the people who are going 8 or 9 days without electricity as temperatures are dipping below freezing at night. For CL&P’s sake, I hope it will conduct a post-mortem on this entire situation and learn from these mistakes: it’s so important for the people in Connecticut that I’d be willing to help the CL&P team develop a preparedness plan for the future.